Lots of good tidbits from this Jon Solomon piece on the practical issues facing Missouri and Texas A&M on their transition to their new conference (and, yes, before you ask, the financial chart has the data backwards). Here are a few:

In Year 1, Texas A&M plays every football national title winner dating back to 2006 (Florida, LSU, Alabama and Auburn).

Texas A&M hasn’t had a defensive lineman drafted by the NFL since 2008, and Missouri’s last one came in 2009. Since 2010, every current SEC team except Vanderbilt has had at least one defensive lineman drafted. The three-year average is 2.3 per team, including four each by Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina.

Forty-three percent of Missouri’s roster comes Missouri. That’s a state from which the original 12 SEC members have only eight players in 2012. The state of Texas, home of Missouri’s No. 1 alumni base (Dallas), makes up 31 percent of the Tigers’ roster.

Missouri has one ex-SEC assistant: co-offensive line coach Josh Henson, LSU’s recruiting coordinator from 2005 to 2008. Texas A&M’s only assistant with SEC ties is defensive line coach Terry Price, who worked at Ole Miss and Auburn from 1995 to 2011.

And if you want to know why both schools are going to have to start coming east to recruit in the SEC, look no further than this chart.

You gotta go where the players are. It’s interesting to note that Gary Pinkel seems more intent on recruiting Georgia and Florida than Kevin Sumlin does. Sumlin is putting together a helluva class right now, so maybe continuing to focus on Texas works for him.

2 responses to “Welcome to the SEC, brothers.”

Sumlin can get the bulk of his QBs, WRs, TEs, OL, RBs, LBs, and Safeties from Texas. He’s already started looking East for CBs and DL. Texas players at those positions can provide quality depth, but the best of the South are a cut above. The best news for A&M is that, unlike Arkansas and Mizzou, they are smack dab in the middle of their recruiting base for 80% of their player needs …

TAMU gets some recruits and stinks it up some years ala Arkansas, but Mizzou stays in Ole Miss/Miss St/Vandy land. No good southern Mama is going to wherever they play in Missouri every other weekend to see her kid play.